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We don’t have a Tier 1 win only because of a technicality: the Minnesota win was over a #14 team at full strength—the refusal to recognize and value this fact is a defect and bias in the system.

And there are some massively-overrated teams ahead of us in the RPI, which also reveals the defects and bias in the system. Examples are St. Bonaventure, Buffalo and Vermont. And how can a team be rated 23 with losses by 14, 20 and 22 in the last 9 games? “Bias” is the answer. It’s the same bias that won’t recognize the value of our first Minnesota win and that continues to say (without any means of verification) that the B1G is “awfully down.”

Agree with what you say about Minnesota. We deserve more credit for that win. But I think it's still pretty clear that the Big Ten is down. Looking at the bottom five teams in our conference (Wisc, Iowa, Minn, Rutgers, Illinois), here's how many teams from each of the major conferences that I think are on or below their level:

Big XII: 0

Big East: 1 (DePaul)

SEC: 2 (Ole Miss, Vandy)

ACC: 3 (GT, WF, Pitt)

Pac-12: 4 (Stan, OSU, Cal, WSU)

Maybe not so coincidentally, that's the exact order of the Conference RPI rankings. Maybe the Big Ten isn't "awfully" down, but from top to bottom, it's certainly competing with the Pac-12 as the worst major conference. And the worst major conference typically gets 3-5 bids, which is the current outlook of the Big Ten. It goes to show that the bottom third of a conference plays a role in the rankings, as it should. IMO, both Nebraska and the conference as a whole are being treated fairly. We're just up in arms because we're not used to seeing 20 win seasons, so the thought of a 23 win season falling short is incomprehensible.

Let's be honest... 8 of our 11 Big Ten wins are against that bottom five group. If we were looking objectively at this same resume for another team, we'd all be complaining that they haven't had any impressive wins... and it's true. We've beaten one tournament team on our home court. That's it. I agree that we're a tournament-quality team, but the resume does not support it.

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I've uploaded an Excel spreadsheet with a list of most the bubble teams and their current "Team Sheet" information that the committee looks at, as well as remaining schedules and my own personal comments on their remaining schedules. My data is sourced from WarrenNolan.com. I have the teams ranked in order of Lunardi's most recent Bracketology. I'll try to continue updating this throughout the next month.

Note: I highlighted recent wins that will improve a team's standing green. I highlighted losses that will hurt a team's standing blue. If I felt like the win or loss is more or less not impactful, I didn't highlight it.

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My first thing I took away from this is that we have the highest strength of record of any other team on the bubble. And here is what espn has to say about SOR.

ESPN's Strength of Record takes strength of schedule a step further by accounting for how a team actually did against its schedule. Unlike BPI, which accounts for how the game was won, Strength of Record simply cares about the difficulty of a team’s schedule and the result (win or loss).

For example, last season, Kansas ranked first in Strength of Record entering the NCAA Tournament, and a typical Top 25 team would have had less than a 1 percent chance to go 30-4 against the Jayhawks’ schedule.

Strength of Record answers the question of which teams deserve to make the NCAA Tournament based on their body of work. It correlates more closely with the actual committee rankings and seeding than BPI, but Strength of Record is far less accurate when making predictions.

Over the past five seasons, 94 percent of teams that SOR deemed deserving to make the tournament ended up making the field of 68.

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Agree with what you say about Minnesota. We deserve more credit for that win. But I think it's still pretty clear that the Big Ten is down. Looking at the bottom five teams in our conference (Wisc, Iowa, Minn, Rutgers, Illinois), here's how many teams from each of the major conferences that I think are on or below their level:

Big XII: 0

Big East: 1 (DePaul)

SEC: 2 (Ole Miss, Vandy)

ACC: 3 (GT, WF, Pitt)

Pac-12: 4 (Stan, OSU, Cal, WSU)

Maybe not so coincidentally, that's the exact order of the Conference RPI rankings. Maybe the Big Ten isn't "awfully" down, but from top to bottom, it's certainly competing with the Pac-12 as the worst major conference. And the worst major conference typically gets 3-5 bids, which is the current outlook of the Big Ten. It goes to show that the bottom third of a conference plays a role in the rankings, as it should. IMO, both Nebraska and the conference as a whole are being treated fairly. We're just up in arms because we're not used to seeing 20 win seasons, so the thought of a 23 win season falling short is incomprehensible.

Let's be honest... 8 of our 11 Big Ten wins are against that bottom five group. If we were looking objectively at this same resume for another team, we'd all be complaining that they haven't had any impressive wins... and it's true. We've beaten one tournament team on our home court. That's it. I agree that we're a tournament-quality team, but the resume does not support it.

I cannot find much to disagree with you here but my eyes tell me this is a tournament team, regardless of who we have beaten. Jon Crispin was on 93.7 this morning and had a great point that you shouldn't unduly punish a team for playing and losing tough games early on, then finding themselves mid season and really turning it on. I can only hope there is logic based discussion in the committee room because this current Nebraska team does not lose to UCF, Kansas or likely Creighton (I hesitate to put a St. John's team with a healthy Lovett in here). Someone needs to make the point that it took time to incorporate three transfers into the lineup and for Nebraska to become a cohesive team. If the goal of the committee is to get the best 36 at large teams into the tournament, then logic, eye test, and recent play would make Nebraska a no-doubter if they finish the season by winning their final 9 regular season games.

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I cannot find much to disagree with you here but my eyes tell me this is a tournament team, regardless of who we have beaten. Jon Crispin was on 93.7 this morning and had a great point that you shouldn't unduly punish a team for playing and losing tough games early on, then finding themselves mid season and really turning it on. I can only hope there is logic based discussion in the committee room because this current Nebraska team does not lose to UCF, Kansas or likely Creighton (I hesitate to put a St. John's team with a healthy Lovett in here). Someone needs to make the point that it took time to incorporate three transfers into the lineup and for Nebraska to become a cohesive team. If the goal of the committee is to get the best 36 at large teams into the tournament, then logic, eye test, and recent play would make Nebraska a no-doubter if they finish the season by winning their final 9 regular season games.

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So here is my biggest argument to the bracketologists that keep downplaying us.

If the Big 10 is so down... Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Rutgers suck more than any teams have sucked before. Then why is it that

Illinois has wins over DePaul and Missouri

Wisconsin is in a down year, but they did beat Western Kentucky

Minnesota... The Minnesota we beat has wins over Providence and Alabama

Rutgers beat Seton Hall

Iowa... Well I don't have anything nice to say about them because Iowa Sucks

That is the biggest issue I have with the computers... Where would you rather play right now @Illinois or @Buffalo. Illinois may be having a down year, but it isn't like they are Iowa School for the Blind... Another good example @Wisconsin or @Louisiana Lafayet...

Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty...

You compared those 5 schools to the other power 6 conferences. That is great in all, but I don't see Buffalo beating a Seton Hall... or Boise State beating Providence... or St. Bonaventure beating Alabama... or Loyola Chicago taking out Missouri.

B1G got their bad rap, because of how they showed up against the ACC. Cool... everyone seems to want to forget that we split the Gavitt Games... You know the one where Rutgers beat Seton Hall. I'm not going to sit here and say that the Big 10 is as deep of a conference as the Big East, ACC, SEC and Big 12. I am going to say that they aren't as shitty as the computer make them out to be. This Big 10 is not anywhere near as bad as the PAC 12 was in 2011-2012 season, and quite frankly I am extremely tired of the comparison!

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"And at 11-5, Nebraska has put Michigan squarely in the rear view mirror, which is a team that is a lock for the NCAA tournament and has been for the past 2 months. It's also a team Nebraska beat by 20 points." - - Kent Pavelka.

Edited Wednesday at 07:55 PM by hal9000

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"And at 11-5, Nebraska has put Michigan squarely in the rear view mirror, which is a team that is a lock for the NCAA tournament and has been for that past 2 months. It's also a team Nebraska beat by 20 points." - - Kent Pavelka.

I lol'd when I heard that line last night. ha.

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A hell of a lot of truth to it. Mich has two Quad 1 wins...winning @Mich St was a very very good win. But winning @Texas? Nice win..but honestly that should not be what separates Michigan from Nebraska.

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A hell of a lot of truth to it. Mich has two Quad 1 wins...winning @Mich St was a very very good win. But winning @Texas? Nice win..but honestly that should not be what separates Michigan from Nebraska.

In my humble opinion, both teams should be in.

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It started out as a really cheap decoration. Nobody knew what it was and nobody paid attention to it. It went unnoticed for such a long time until one day Scott Van Pelt tells the world not to sleep on kale. Still, most people didn't take notice, but some people started to try it. Slowly, more and more people got onto the kale craze and it started snowballing from there. Before you know it, kale was trendy and cool and everybody wanted to be part of it. And even those people who didn't jump on board still knew what kale was as it was hard to avoid. Some people hate it, but they still know what it is.

It's a slow, gradual process. More and more people will pay attention to kale. Trendy things take some time, but in the end they become part of the narrative. Now we just wait to see if kale knows how to go dancing.

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So here is my biggest argument to the bracketologists that keep downplaying us.

If the Big 10 is so down... Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Rutgers suck more than any teams have sucked before. Then why is it that

Illinois has wins over DePaul and Missouri

Wisconsin is in a down year, but they did beat Western Kentucky

Minnesota... The Minnesota we beat has wins over Providence and Alabama

Rutgers beat Seton Hall

Iowa... Well I don't have anything nice to say about them because Iowa Sucks

I never said they suck more than any teams have sucked before. I simply said that we have five teams that I deem to be pretty bad, whereas the other major conferences have between zero and four.

Illinois - Winning at home against DePaul doesn't disprove what I said. I said the teams I listed are on or below their level. So I would expect Illinois to win that game at home. The Missouri game was a nice upset. But they also lost to UNLV, NMSU, and Wake Forest.

Wisconsin - I'm not comparing anyone to Western Kentucky. I don't think they're that good, and they will not get an at-large bid with their resume so we don't need to worry about them. Wisconsin is terrible this year and if you don't see that then I guess there's no point in continuing this discussion.

Minnesota - The good Minnesota has not been around since December. They're not good anymore.

Rutgers - Nice win against Seton Hall. They also lost to Stony Brook and Hartford.

Iowa - Agree, Iowa sucks!

What major conference team that I didn't list in my last post would you consider to be worse than any these five?